This article by HRE Online on benefits of mentoring is a good read. Kind of summarizes what Sun does with SEED program.

Nature magazine recently published an very good article titled “Nature’s guide to mentoring.” This article outlines the key benefits of mentoring programs like Sun’s SEED program.

The article talks about the benefits of mentoring in research and scientific community. The same benefits can be extrapolated to thought leadership in industry research, product development and engineering processes. SEED essentially does the same thing. The engineering community at Sun contributes to research, development and engineering processes at/from Sun. As part of the SEED program, selected engineering community members are paired up with mentors to improve their growth potential. As a result, the quality of the engineering community keeps on improving at Sun. This has a long term positive impact on Sun’s innovations and product lines.